Aftermath

by Nir Rosen

  The Dinniyeh incident, along with an attack on the Russian embassy and similar incidents, were the first signs that Salafi jihadism was establishing a presence in Lebanon. One lesson of the incident was that the poverty and neglect in northern Lebanon could affect the rest of the country, but this was forgotten until February 5, 2006, when rioters came down from the north in buses provided by the Sunni Endowment and rampaged through Christian neighborhoods in Beirut, seeking vengeance for the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. Christians were shocked, as security forces were nowhere to be found despite having advance notice of the demonstration. Those rioters who were arrested were quickly released. Ahmad Fatfat, who was interior minister in 2005, had struggled to release the Dinniyeh prisoners in order to gain the support of northern Sunnis and Salafis. As a concession to Christians the government then released Samir Geagea, the notorious war criminal who had killed Palestinians as well as Christian rivals during the 1980s. Much fanfare met the release of the Dinniyeh prisoners; the episode was televised and used to demonstrate that the government was pro-Sunni. Some of them had belonged to Harakat al-Tawhid al-Islami (The Islamic Unity Movement), the main Islamist militia that fought the Syrian presence in northern Lebanon in the 1980s. In the shifting alliances of Lebanese militias, Tawhid is now considered pro-Syrian.

  Abu Anas blamed the Lebanese army for the clashes. “They wanted Hizballah to control the conflict with Israel,” he said. “The Lebanese army ambushed them, and during the negotiations they surrounded them and attacked them.” Abu Anas had previously belonged to Tawhid. More than fifty Palestinians had belonged to Tawhid, he told me. Many had gone on to other Islamist movements.

  In May 2007 members of a new and somewhat mysterious jihadist group, Fatah al-Islam, robbed a bank in Tripoli, provoking clashes with the army. Salafi militants also robbed banks in Sidon and other parts of the country. “Al Qaeda uses credit cards to fund themselves, and they rob banks and companies that are infidel to fund themselves,” Abu Ghassan explained. “They don’t rob in a criminal way. They don’t want to hurt anybody. There is a difference between killing people and taking money that belongs to Muslim people.” Although most of the soldiers battling Fatah al-Islam in the north were Sunnis, Abu Ghassan did not blame Sunnis. “The Lebanese army answers to the government, and even though the head of government is a Sunni, the orders come from America. They are not fighting as Sunnis but as soldiers, getting orders, and they think Fatah al-Islam are terrorists.” I asked him what he thought. “I think Fatah al-Islam are good people,” he said.

  The Mystery of Fatah al-Islam

  The origins of Fatah al-Islam are nebulous, but based on meetings with Palestinian faction leaders and security officials, as well as documents obtained from their interrogation of the group’s members, I pieced together its history. In the summer of 2006 new faces appeared in Shatila and Burj al-Barajneh, the Palestinian camps of Beirut, and in Bedawi and Nahr al-Barid, the camps near the northern city of Tripoli. The men were clearly religious, and they were assumed to be Salafis. They had long beards, and some even wore the Afghan salwar kameez. Some were clearly foreign. When camp security inquired about the newcomers, they were told, curiously, that the men belonged to Fatah al-Intifada’s “Western Section,” a traditionally leftist, broadly secular Syrian-allied Palestinian group that split from the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1983, which was preparing fighters to go to Palestine. Others claimed they were “from the inside,” meaning from Palestine itself. During Israel’s July 2006 war on Lebanon, more Salafi fighters arrived in these camps, in part because a Fatah al-Intifada camp near the Syrian border in eastern Lebanon was evacuated during the war. Suspicions were aroused because the left-leaning Fatah al-Intifada was known to pay low salaries but some of the newcomers had laptops and went around on motorcycles. The newcomers were led by Shaker al-Absi, a veteran Fatah al-Intifada officer who had been trained as a pilot in Libya and served as one in North Yemen, in addition to fighting in Nicaragua. Absi was in his fifties. A Palestinian born in Jordan, he had spent most of his life in Syrian and Lebanese camps. He was likely disillusioned with the aging and moribund Arab left—which groups like Fatah al-Intifada epitomized—and he was said to have been very religious. In 2002 he was arrested with fifteen others for trying to infiltrate the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. He spent two and a half years in jail, and was said to have gone to Iraq after his release, eventually making his way to the Helweh camp in the Beqaa Valley, by the Syrian border. There he and his followers trained volunteers, including young men from the slums of Tripoli, to fight in Iraq. Gulf Arabs who flew to Beirut to go to Iraq also gathered there. They were segregated from the rest of the camp and better financed, eating better food like lamb.

  When Zarqawi died, some of his men came to Lebanon. Some Salafis were diverted to the Burj al-Barajneh camp to serve as a bulwark against the Shiite suburbs of Beirut, known as Dahiyeh. Many Syrians and Palestinian Syrians who had fought in Iraq and become radicalized there made their way to Lebanon. More than two hundred such men had left Damascus’s Yarmuk refugee camp to fight in Iraq with Zarqawi, even though that camp was dominated by the far more moderate Hamas movement. Abu Midyan was one of the foreign fighters who left Iraq because of concerns about the state of the jihad there. He led other comrades in arms from Iraq to Yarmuk, but the Syrians pressured them to leave, so they moved to Lebanon’s camps, where they began to recruit from the poor.

  Abu Yasser, the Fatah al-Intifada leader for northern Lebanon, was surprised because the newcomers were bearded, prayed five times a day, and abstained from smoking. He asked his superior, the Syrian-based Abu Khalid al-Amli, deputy commander of Fatah al-Intifada, who the newcomers were. “We have new fighters,” he said. “We must learn from Hizballah’s military and discipline. They are destined for Gaza.” Abu Khalid was also sending jihadists to Ayn al-Hilweh. Abu Yasser was surprised and unsettled by the presence of foreigners among them. “Their commanders were Palestinians, and they were independent of us,” he said. When other factions asked Fatah al-Intifada who the new men were, they were told cryptically that it was an “internal matter.” Shaker al-Absi was the third-ranking official in Fatah al-Intifada, and his authority exceeded that of Abu Yasser’s. “I accepted Shaker but didn’t control him,” said Abu Yasser. Abu Musa, the commander of Fatah al-Intifada in Syria, began to complain that he did not know what was happening in his own organization.

  The popular committee for security in Bedawi was tasked with investigating all outsiders who rented apartments in that camp, especially single men. Committee members monitored how much food was being brought into the apartments daily to estimate how many people might be inside. In November a new group of outsiders came to Bedawi and Nahr al-Barid, whom camp residents felt were not part of any Palestinian faction. The committee grew suspicious of newcomers who brought in many bags but had no families. Residents spoke of strange men carrying bags who entered twelve apartments in the camp. One night five strangers came into the camp, and armed members of the resistance asked them what was in their bags, which caused the men to run away. Some of the men were foreigners, including Saudis, Yemenis, Algerians, Iraqis, Lebanese, and an Omani. Fourteen of them lived together in one apartment. When the security committee members first tried to gain access, the Omani, named Ahmad, shut the door in their faces and refused to open it.

  On November 23, 2006, an armed patrol of different faction members from the camp security committee was sent to the apartment. They found two Kalashnikovs along with ammunition and grenades and asked the fourteen men to come with them. When the men walked by a Fatah al-Intifada office where Salafi comrades were staying, they erupted in shouts of “God is great! Come to jihad!” and ran inside, throwing a grenade at the security men. An exchange of fire followed, and one of the security men was killed. The security committee raided the other apartments, but the suspects were communicating by radio and some escaped. One Saudi was shot in the leg while trying to escape. When an armed S
yrian comrade on a motorcycle attempted to rescue him, he too was shot, and both were taken to a camp hospital. The Syrian had documents signed by Shaker al-Absi. During his interrogation by the Palestinian security officials, the two admitted that they were members of Al Qaeda in Iraq and had come to Lebanon during the July war for training, recruitment, and jihad. Up to eighty men like them entered Lebanon via Fatah al-Intifada, using the organization as a conduit. They claimed to have come to assassinate seventeen Lebanese officials, including members of Parliament, sheikhs, and members of the security forces.

  The two men were handed to the Lebanese army. Camp officials found cameras, four computers, and scanners used to make fake identification documents. They also found CDs with footage of training and members swearing oaths of loyalty to Osama bin Laden. “Wherever Muslims are oppressed, we will help them,” said one of the men in a film. Other material included maps of the region. Books with instructions on bomb-making were covered by copies of the Koran. They also found a collection of Al Qaeda statements. Abu Yasser told me that he had received a call warning him to leave the computers alone because they were very important.

  One young Syrian had left behind a final statement, handwritten with messages to his family; another young jihadist stressed that “this time, I will not go back. I repeat, I will not go back.” The young man, who had previously engaged in armed struggle, said, “With all that I have seen the last time, I’m in a serious danger of apostasy—God forbid—if I don’t go back there. If the scents of musk and the light in the martyrs’ faces and all the other graces we saw and were told of mean anything, they must mean only one thing, that this route is the path of heaven. Moreover, there is no heaven except by this path.”

  Some of the apartments had been rented by Kanan Naji, a former member of Tawhid who was a liaison between the Future Movement and Fatah al-Islam. Naji was also part of the Independent Islamic Gathering, a group that included prominent clerics in Tripoli such as Dai al-Islam al-Shahal and Bilal Barudi. The Gathering tried to influence Fatah al-Islam, and several of its members were in touch with the group.

  In the 1980s Naji’s Jund Allah militia of about one hundred had been based in Tripoli’s Abu Samra neighborhood. They were known for wearing all-black military fatigues and received some of their arms from Fatah. Once the Syrians took over Tripoli in 1986, Naji fled to areas controlled by a Christian militia. He was underground in the 1990s, but following the Syrian withdrawal in 2005 he became very active, establishing a close relationship with Hariri’s Future Movement and the Lebanese Internal Security Forces, and providing arms to Fatah al-Islam. Four Palestinians affiliated with Naji’s militia rented some of the apartments in Tripoli. They brought in sniper rifles, M-16s, and other weapons more advanced than what was usually found in the camp. Naji was one of the officials who hoped to use jihadist Salafis to serve the purposes of the anti-Shiite Future Movement.

  The camp’s leading factions prepared to rid themselves of the Salafis, but the Salafis—who until then were identified as the Salafist wing of Fatah al-Intifada—absconded to the nearby Nahr al-Barid camp. On November 26, 2006, they declared themselves under the new moniker Fatah al-Islam, calling for their supporters from other camps to join them and calling for the death of Abu Yasser, the leader of Fatah al-Intifada in northern Lebanon, for his role in turning over two of their men to the Lebanese army. Abu Yasser sent a message to his boss, Abu Khalid al-Amli, in Damascus, accusing him of putting camp security in danger by sponsoring the Salafis initially. Abu Yasser was incensed to learn that about thirty Salafis posing as Fatah al-Intifada also came up to Nahr al-Barid from Beirut’s refugee camps. Abu Fadi, the commander of Fatah al-Intifada for all of Lebanon, had even used Salafis as bodyguards. He was expelled from the group and fled to the United Arab Emirates.

  Abu Yasser claims that he had been deceived by Abu Khalid. “He tricked the organization,” he says. “Abu Khalid was a dictator, and he is a secular man in every meaning of the word. He was preparing groups to fight the Americans in Lebanon, and maybe he was making a connection with Al Qaeda. The Syrians didn’t know the details of Abu Khalid’s plan, but they knew in general about the ideology of the fighters and that they were coming to Lebanon to fight America, and the Syrians did not know of the connection between Abu Khalid and Al Qaeda. Abu Khalid was expelled from the organization.” Abu Khalid was jailed by the Syrians, but because he was seventy-five years old and had a heart condition, he was placed under house arrest.

  The camp’s security committee began to investigate Fatah al-Islam and its associates. One Syrian suspect, born in 1980, had entered Lebanon in March 2007. He had come up to Bedawi from Ayn al-Hilweh, where he joined Fatah al-Islam. Despite his ties to the jihadists, he was released because some of the camp officials worried about upsetting the Islamists in the camp. Another suspect confessed that he too belonged to Fatah al-Islam. When the raid took place, he had been in touch with a man from Jund Allah via his walkie-talkie. He was spirited away to Tripoli, where he stayed in an apartment belonging to Kanan Naji. When he returned to Bedawi he was arrested by the security committee and was found to be carrying an American-made pistol. Another prisoner, born in 1986 in Syria, had been in touch with Fatah al-Islam via the Internet. He was given an address near a mosque in Bedawi and told to go there. He took money from his father, telling him it was to cover the cost of his university tuition, but instead he went to Lebanon, hoping Fatah al-Islam would help him get to Iraq “to resist the Americans, because the Americans are the enemies of Islam.” The young man’s cover in the camp was that he was studying Islam.

  In November 2006 things got worse in Taamir, an area between Sidon and Ayn al-Hilweh. Jihadist Salafis took control of the neighborhood and imposed Islamic law. At the entrance to Taamir a banner signed by Zarqawi called for the defeat of America in Iraq. Many Lebanese families left, fearing for their lives. That month a statement signed by the “Al Qaeda Organization in Lebanon,” allegedly based in Nahr al-Barid, threatened the Lebanese government, announcing that Al Qaeda had arrived in Lebanon and would work to destroy the government, which was commanded by the Americans. They would fight the enemies of God until victory or martyrdom, the statement said.

  In Nahr al-Barid, however, Fatah al-Islam found a welcoming environment. Pictures of Saddam Hussein were on the camp’s walls and in its homes and shops. Graffiti in support of the jihad in Iraq was also evident. When the Syrians pulled their troops out of Lebanon and lost direct control of the camps, the vacuum they left was filled by mosques, which gained in influence as the leftist resistance groups weakened and money from the Gulf came in. Islamists were seen driving expensive cars. Nahr al-Barid was more conservative and religious than other camps, with the most clerics (about fifteen) and the most mosques (about ten). Even before the July war inhabitants began to notice religious men moving into the camp who spoke in foreign dialects and whose wives were veiled. Up to seventy of them arrived during the war, a phenomenon similar to what occurred in other camps. Following the flight of Fatah al-Islam to Nahr al-Barid, these various groups joined their leader, Shaker al-Absi, openly taking their weapons with them. Up to fifty-six people came to Nahr al-Barid from the Burj al-Barajneh camp in Beirut.

  Fatah al-Islam had been planning to establish itself anyway, but in more than one camp at once, at a time of its choosing. In Nahr al-Barid group members took over the offices and weapons depots that had belonged to Fatah al-Intifada. They replaced Palestinian flags with Islamic flags. “When they took down Palestinian flags we knew they had no Palestinian agenda,” said Abu Yasser. New weapons arrived—American M-16s, M4s, and even missiles, unlike the Kalashnikovs that the Palestinian factions were accustomed to. In a meeting with all the camp factions Fatah al-Intifada insisted that whereas before they had been suspicious of the newcomers, now they knew the men were dangerous. Fatah agreed that they should be expelled. Other groups, nervous about potential strife, refused to have any bloodshed in the camp. Fatah al-Intifada warned that Nah
r al-Barid had been hijacked by Fatah al-Islam and all would bear responsibility for what would happen. Estimates for the initial size of Fatah al-Islam varied from forty-five to seventy. Some of the men had brought their families; others married local women. Only a minority of them were Palestinians. Most were Lebanese, Saudis, Yemenis, Syrians, and even Iraqis. Many came openly, in vans. Wanted Palestinian and Lebanese men from Ayn al-Hilweh and Taamir made their way to Nahr al-Barid as well, despite the many checkpoints along the way, leading camp officials to suspect senior Lebanese official involvement in the move, since the Interior Ministry was in the hands of pro-Hariri Sunnis. Although Usbat al-Ansar never publicly endorsed Fatah al-Islam, it did dispatch fighters to join the group in the north.

  Jihadists with a more violent and nihilistic agenda took over Fatah al-Islam’s leadership council and influenced its leaders, shifting their focus away from Palestine and toward global jihad. Abu Laith, the son-in-law of Shaker al-Absi and one of the founders of Fatah al-Islam, grew frustrated with the group’s change; he left for Iraq but was killed by Syrian security forces at the border. Other members also disagreed with the more extreme elements. Abu Midyan, who was said to have orchestrated the February 2007 bus bombings north of Beirut, refused to fight the Lebanese army because his enemy was Israel. In Nahr al-Barid, Shaker al-Absi linked up with a powerful arms dealer called Nasser Ismail in order to improve his power base in the camp. Ismail helped recruit members, including the more radical Abu Hureira, a Lebanese member of Jund al-Sham. Abu Hureira helped push Fatah al-Islam toward a more extremist position, and he brought many other Lebanese Salafi jihadists with him. These radicals began to alienate the residents of Nahr al-Barid. Abu Midyan and Abu Hureira disagreed about the new direction the group was taking. While Absi did not share the views of these radicals, he needed the military support they brought, and so he could not afford a rift with them. A Saudi cleric linked to Al Qaeda called Abu al-Hareth took over the leadership council. He helped bring more foreign fighters and create cells outside the camp. Some of the newcomers spoke of creating an Islamic state in northern Lebanon. Others didn’t even know they were in Lebanon; they thought they were in Iraq.